1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computing systems, and deals more particularly with techniques for federating, or joining, content from multiple administrative consoles (which may operate as legacy and/or remote consoles) into a central console, where that central console may be rendered (for example) for use by a systems administrator in performing operations such as resource configuration and systems management.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer software and hardware systems are often configured, monitored, and managed by one or more administrators using graphical user interfaces called “consoles”. Often, each system component within an information technology (“IT”) environment has its own independently-developed console for carrying out these operations. Even a relatively small business can require a number of different computer-based products (including hardware components and/or software components) for its business solution, and a large business or other enterprise may have a very large number of such products in its IT environment. As a result, an administrator working in the IT environment may be faced with a large number of different consoles.
Many prior art console applications are written for administering a single system. FIG. 1 illustrates this approach, wherein a systems administrator 100 uses a client agent 110 (such as a browser) to access a console application 120 that provides administrative functionality. In this example, the console application 120 interacts with a single management agent 130, which in turn interacts with a single managed system 140. FIG. 2 depicts another prior art approach, where a systems administrator 200 is now responsible for administering multiple systems. In this example, the user 200 still uses a client agent 110 to access a console application 220, but now the administrator may selectively access information pertaining to one of multiple back-end systems. Thus, a solid line 221 is used to show that the console application 220 is currently interacting with management agent 230 to administer a back-end system referred to as “Managed System A” 240. Dashed lines 222 and 223 indicate that the administrator 200 might alternatively use console application 220 to interact with management agent 231 or 232, thereby administering the back-end system “Managed System B” 241 or the back-end system “Managed System C” 242.
In an IT environment having even a relatively small number of systems to be managed, accessing information pertaining to one managed system at a time quickly becomes unwieldy, as the administrator must change back and forth between consoles. The related invention titled “Using Content Aggregation to Build Administration Consoles” (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/795,008), hereinafter referred to as “the related invention”, discloses techniques for aggregating content views for multiple managed resources (where the resources may be hardware and/or software resources), where preferred embodiments leverage a framework such as a portal/portlets model as an infrastructure. Thus, a console as disclosed in the related invention enables consolidating the administrative interfaces from any arbitrary collection of hardware and/or software resources into a single, integrated network console. This integrated network console is preferably deployed as a network-accessible console application (referred to equivalently herein as a Web-based console application), such that an administrator can invoke the console using a Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) from a browser or similar client application. The integrated console of the related invention thereby provides a central point of access for administering a number of resources (and is also referred to herein as a “central console”).
The Web-based console application disclosed in the related invention solves a number of problems and provides a number of advantages. (Reference may be made to the disclosure of the related invention for a detailed discussion thereof) The Web-based console infrastructure offers a programming model for building new console snap-ins or plug-ins; when a portal infrastructure is used, for example, the plug-in functionality is preferably developed using a portlet/J2EE® programming model. (“J2EE” is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both.) However, the existing administrative functions for many resources do not adhere to that model. Rather than requiring the administrator to switch between using the central console to manage some resources and a different console to manage other resources with these existing administrative functions, it would be preferable to allow the administrator to access the existing administrative functions directly from the central console. Furthermore, the goal of integrating administrative functions for a large number of resources in a single console will be achieved much more quickly if already-existing programming code that manages resources does not have to be rewritten to use the central console's programming model.
Accordingly, what is needed are improvements to administration consoles.